Jo Freya’s Musings

I was watching a bit of the’One Show’ last night whilst letting my dinner go down. I really quite like Alex, the Welsh woman who present it. I love her accent and I find her a very natural presenter who has her eye on the ‘time’ ball but get’s what she wants from the guests whilst making them feel at ease. That’s highly skilled in my opinion.

Anyway, she had some guest on from the latest version of ‘Top Gear’. Freddy Flintoff etc. I confess to never having been a fan of Top Gear but if I’m truthful it’s mostly because of the previous versions presenters presentation style which got right up my nose and consequently I haven’t watched this version at all.

I was intrigued by the conversation about cars they remembered from their youth. Essentially their parents cars. It looks like the program had sourced the same cars from the relevant years that their parents had them and each presenter got to sit in and drive the relevant model. What was lovely was their almost childlike glee and awe about how evocative the whole experience was but particularly the smell. That made me reminisce about similar experiences and often to do with cars.

I was born at the end of 1960 and fostered until I was 4 and a half so my memories come from after that time. Cars then had leather seats and, of course people smoked in them too. I was one of those children who suffered terribly from motion sickness and the mix of the smell of hot leather, stale cigarettes and lingering perfume was enough to set me off before the car had even started. I am sure if I were in that situation again I would be mentally reduced to a vulnerable little girl with green gills both knowing she’s about to, and trying terribly hard not to, decorate the car with diced carrots (and creme de menthe if you’re the pope). Thinking of that time also shoots me to those moments of getting in in a skirt or shorts and sitting on really hot leather which you then stuck to and had to peel yourself off at the other end of the journey, leaving the car with large red welts on the back of your thighs. Ouch!

There’s memories of a car that I can’t remember the make or model of, although the seats, which feature large, are definitely a sort of slightly sicky cream colour and journeys in a motor bike and side car. Our favourite boyfriend that mum had was a tall lanky man with dark glasses and a large adam’s apple called Dennis or Den as some people called him. He was also a tinkerer . You know, out there fettling his motor bike in the days when ordinary folk could understand the basics of motor mechanics and didn’t need a diagnostics machine to do it for them, so he always smelt of petrol and cigarettes. He would wear a big old holey jumper and clasp you to his specific sent of man, petrol and ciggs. As I liked him I rather liked that smell and being grasped to his gangly, angley body.

Years later it’s whether a car smells clean or not that I notice and I take great pleasure in the smell of new cars or cars freshly cleaned but not, I add swiftly, with those horrible chemical dangly air freshener things. I hate that cloying false smell and would never have them plugged in in my house either. Anyone else have clear car smell, journey smell memories?

This is a gentle edge back into blogging. For those of you new to my blogs they are generally about my experiences past and present as a musician…I would have said ‘experiences on the road’ but that description doesn’t fit with the current climate very well. However, in this current case it did actually involve a very recent three and a half hour journey there and back.

I thought, particularly for those of you who weren’t there, I’d talk about delivering a face to face workshop, last weekend 16^th – 18^th Oct 2020, at Halsway manor with 4 band colleagues and a room full of people.

As the summer progressed it seemed that the workshop might happen despite that fact that almost everything had disappeared from the diary by then right up to the end of the year. The summer seemed to present a little rainbow of optimism and Halsway were keen to keep things on the program until such time as they couldn’t be however, then things began to get dodgy again. So much had been cancelled, work wise, that really my expectation was that anything left in would be too. I had wanted to go to France to visit my house too as I haven’t been there since March but the only two weeks I could have gone were immediately before Halsway and with the government regulation on sheltering for two weeks after coming back from France I couldn’t do that and do Halsway as well. A catch twenty two where neither might be possible.

That then put even more pressure on the ‘I really want this to happen’ bubble in my head. As it got closer and the infection levels began to rise and the government developed its tier system I was then slightly torn. I had mostly reconciled myself to wanting to take calculated risks and how best to keep myself as safe as possible but the spiral felt like it was conspiring against me. My nearest and dearest was also pointing out that this one weekend was the greatest risk either of us had taken up to this point. No pressure then!

Within that there was also the recognition from both of us that our mental health is at risk from various aspects of the corona virus situation and a break with a change of scene can work wonders.

When I have talked about my lymphoma cancer in Vlogs and such I have talked about healthy paranoia. That’s the type of paranoia that keeps you vigilant to what is going on in your body. Well I have the same attitude towards COVID in the sense that I live relatively normally but I am intensely conscious about people’s abilities or wishes to socially distance or indeed understand who is protecting whom. So, I only mention that as a setting the scene type comment before my journey down to Halsway.

I had my flu jab in that morning, whilst trying to avoid people in Boots who were paying no attention to me. I then headed straight off on my journey South to the beautiful Quantocks. Yes, I did ridiculous things like not drinking too much because I didn’t want to stop before getting there. I have been in some service stations in the last few months and they’re not all brilliant so I didn’t want to stop for the loo.

That all worked perfectly and I arrived at the beautiful Halsway Manor. Linda, fellow band member and I, had a walk round and a chat with Rachel who is Halsway’s educational manager and we saw the very impressive new dining rooms. I’ve run courses many times at Halsway and quite often my groups have been the ones working in the space that’s called the long room. As this used to also double as a dining room anyone working in there used to have to finish their workshop sessions early, if the session was immediately before meal times, so the tables could be laid out. Not anymore. How fantastic to have added space. 

I loaded gear into my bedroom, ensuite, and had a meeting with the band before dinner.

The manor had plenty of hand gel everywhere and anyone walking about needed to wear a mask. Dinner and all beverages were table service including the bar. What was interesting about the ‘masks while moving around rule’ was that I realised at the end of the weekend that I had moved around far less than I would have done in a normal workshop and in fact remained sat down for most of it. My early morning walks up the steep hill nearby were essential to combat an over sedentary life style.

One of the lovely things they had done in the long room was to mark out the floor into 2 meter square boxes. This meant we could encourage everyone to go into a box or share if they were there with a partner or someone they were in a bubble with. All participants were asked to use their own ensuite bathrooms where possible, rather that the public loos near the bar, and everyone’s temperature was taken every morning. I probably should point out that there was nothing wrong with the public loos and they were cleaned constantly. It was just for the extra safety aspect.

All Fabulous. We managed to arrange the long room so that no-one was sitting directly in front of the 3 reed blowing players and there was plenty of space around the flautists. I sat in front of an open window to keep the place and myself ventilated and in many ways I felt there wasn’t much more that could have been done.

Yes, there were the odd moments when individuals began to move around to leave the room and someone would shout ‘mask’ and they’d go, ‘oh god yes!’ and turn around and pick it up. All with great good humour and a lot of laughter. Really nice that everyone was trying to help everyone else. You become very conscious of the smallest of things. Who is going to hand out the photocopying? You didn’t want everyone coming up and riffling through the papers. In an ideal world, had we been able to plan everything in advance, they would have had copies by email and been encouraged to bring their own. The participants were encouraged to keep the copies given to them so that no more needed handing out. I suppose for absolute safety they should have hand gelled their hands again after taking them. 

So much more to think about than just delivering workshops eh?

……and then there was the music.

The standard of playing was good and we had a room full of a good variety of instruments. Everyone was game to have a go at everything and they made some truly joyful sounds. The point of these workshops is to take you through a ‘Token Women’ experience. That’s the name of the band and the experience I am talking about is how we put our music together and to give a true flavour of how it sounds. I have been lucky to be in a few bands that really sound quite different from everything else around them and Token Women is one of those. Hard to analyse but it’s something to do with the breadth of repertoire..anything goes as long as it’s fit for purpose and arrangements that are unusual because of the way the brass and horn parts are layered over and the use of rhythmic patterns. Most bands use rhythm in an approach to arrangement it’s just that it seems to come out with a different end product with us. The workshop shared this process looking firstly at what we do then progressing through workshops looking at rhythms and cross rhythms and potential harmony until you apply those to new tunes..and if you listen to the musicians around you, you get some interesting results and so it proved. We had some small breakout sessions for people to explore how to develop something and there were lovely pieces developed. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. My group were looking at a tune the band already played but what they came up with in terms of chords and feel was completely different. I always find that so refreshing.

I had pointed out my ‘vulnerable’ status before going and so had a dining room table to myself. That was a little lonely at times but necessary I felt. I also went back to my room in breaks as ‘hanging around chatting’ was not encouraged. You could sit in the bar of course and have table service if the bar was open or just sit in the bar and play about when not involved in the workshops or evening activities I need a break.

The first night we just had a session and due to the numbers stayed in the long room and the second night we had a kind of ‘over to you’ event where people could put their name down and do a turn which was really nice, again in the long room to allow for social distancing and whilst it’s not as intimate as the bar it still has a lovely atmosphere. Drinks were served until 10pm as Halsway’s bar has the same rules as are applied to all other bars and pubs. You wouldn’t say it was the same as being in the bar. Nothing is the same but where you need to work around things, provided you are willing to accept alternatives, it allowed the evening event to happen in a way that could include everyone. The bar isn’t big enough for all so that would have been more difficult.

I only got weepy once and that was near the end. One of the things Rachel had said on arrival was, “be kind to yourselves and take it steady as none of us have done this for a long time”. Sound advice and for her it had taken her the best part of two weeks not to feel exhausted after coming into work. A weekend like this was tiring not only on a work and concentration level but for other reasons s too. That was the first time I had been constantly around anymore than one person for months. The new dining rooms don’t have curtains yet so the acoustics are bright and lively and make it difficult to hear. Especially difficult for me as due to my ‘vulnerable’ status I was on a table on my own (my request) so ear wigging other people’s conversations wasn’t easy. Then there’s the physicality of blowing down various saxes and clarinets all day and then contributing to the evenings too. So, my weepy moment was probably affected by a little fatigue when I was thinking the participants and saying what a lovely time I had had and hoped they had too and how important these types of events were to me. No-one minded the wobbly voice and watery eyes.

Last weekend I was performing as part of a group called ‘Voices At The Door’ which is normally a six piece a capella group. I say normally as it was six  originally with Barry Coope, Jim Boyes, Lester Simpson, Jo Freya, Fi Fraser and Goergina Boyes but Lester left and, whilst Jim Causley will be joining it couldn’t happen this December. So we were a five piece. We sing and Michael Morpurgo (he of ‘War Horse’ fame) reads one of his books and usually an actress is also part of the show reading alongside Michael. We currently do three shows. Well actually there is a forth but I have forgottne it’s name believe it or not and we have only done it once….but the others are ‘On Angel Wings’, ‘Where my Wellies Take Me; and ‘The Best Christmas Present”.

Last weekend it was “The Best Christmas Present” and the actress who reads along side Michael is the extraordinary Virginia McKenna. To say she reads is an understatement as she is an extraordinary actress and that comes through in the way she delivers the bits she reads. Virginia’s most famous role, in her acting life, was as part of a ground breaking film called Born Free and she is still part of the charity set up with that name that rescues animals…most famously in the film, Lions, but not exclusively. Last weekends show was part of a literary festival and, being programmed for 11am, we all needed to be there the night before. So it seemed logical to go out for a meal together. We went to a place in Newcastle called The Kilne and they had set a largish round table up in a back room away from eberyone else. There were the five of us, Virginia and Michael, Clare Morpurgo, married to Michael but is head of the charity ‘Farms for City Children’ and also reads as part of the show ‘Where my Wellies Take Me” (It’s written by Michael but is actually about Clare’s Childhood)..and then some people who looked familiar but who we didn’t know. It turned out we had met them before but we didn’t really ‘know’ them in the real sense and even after our lovely evening I can’t remember everybodies name but I do remember some extraordinary stories. These other people, two women particularly, had known Michael for a long time and had their own charities. One headed a charity called ‘Seven Stories” and was about getting access to books for all children. Another was a woman called Sarah who set up schools for children in Afganistan. She’d gone there orginally as a medic but had felt impelled to improve the access to education for all children but in particular for girls. The charity successfully set up hundreds of these schools and their relative success depended on the type of Taliban in the area and the willingness of the elders in the community to co-operate. I asked Sarah’s husband, who was sat next to me, how difficult it was to make sure the girls were included. He said that the Taliban were many different groups and not the same everywhere, with different values etc etc and that many of them were trying to repair some of the bad image they now had. As part of that some Taliban felt that if the school had a six foot wall around it, they were not too concerned about what went on within those walls. Pretty much ‘what you can’t see doesn’t offend’. How amazing is that? The charity has been running for eighteen years and now have some of the girls and boys they taught teaching in those schools and taking on other roles. The charity have reached the point where they want to step back and the Afghan government want to carry on the work so it is being handed over. An amazing example of creating a project that becomes sustainable in it’s own right in the end. Of course there are no guarantees what the future may bring but I felt incredibly inspired by the passion that saw this woman dive into a difficult territory and create something that was so worthwhile that the people want to and have the skills too carry it on for themselves.

Another conversation came form Virgina talking about the Born Free charity and the film. She said that when they were filming someone had insisted they should use captive Lions as that would be safer. She said it turned out to be the absolute opposite. The captive lions were frustrated animals who were not content and consequently unreliable in temperament and dangerous. They filmed in the end with wild Lions of all ages and sizes and everything was fine.

Virgina’s main point was that all captivity of animals is unneccesary and cruel. One time they were trying to buy a baby elephant from a zoo because it was so upsetting to see him there especially as elephants are such family orientated animals. They wanted to take him to a sanctuary with other lone elephants that were bonding and being helped back to the wild. The zoo said they would only let him go if the charity bought the zoo another baby elephant to replace him. They couldn’t face the idea of dragging another baby elephant away from it’s family groupimg and so they had to walk away. They kept an eye out for him and were horrified to hear that the zoo had, eventually, decided to move the elephant on one occasion. They put him in a crate that was so small he couldn’t move at all and they left him there for so long one of his knees collapsed and broke, under his own weight, and so they shot him…or in Virginia’s words..they murdered him.

It is such a privilege to hear people talk truthfully about things they feel passionately about and these people aren’t just thinkers but doers. Whilst you and I might totally applaud what they do most of us would not put ourselves in the positions they have i.e. in potentially personally dangerous situations. We might talk, we might give money but they do……they actually put their bodies where their mouths are…and what a privilege to be in their company and hear them talk.

The show  the following morning was lovely but one of the reasons I am writing this blog is that life as a musician isn’t just about the music. I feel so lucky to meet the people I do, from all walks of life and cultures, to learn about their lives and continue learning, generally, about mans humanity and inhumanity to man and beast through real stories. Music feeds my soul but so do nights like that. Much food for thought.

Some of you may know that one of my best pals is the wonderful woman that is Linda Thompson. We are such good friends that it’s hard to belive we haven’t been friends all our lives and, contrary to the way facebook normally works, it actually had a part in building this relationship.

I knew who she was. In fact if you want the honest truth she was one of my idols as a vocalist. One of the first albums in our house, after The Beatles and The Seekers that my mum already had, was Richard and Linda Thompson, ‘Bright Lights Tonight’. From that came many other albums which we could all sing end to end and I fell in love with her voice. From that point she was in my top 5 favourite female singers of all time. Some voices connect and hers did with me. She touches me emotionally. So that’s the history of me knowing who she was innitially. Years later I was at an Albion Band gig at The Half Moon in Putney as a guest of anoher good friend of mine Cathy Lesurf. Unbeknown to me Linda was in the audience and came back stage. Other than being awe struck I don’t remember much other than her saying I had a nice voice, although why I was singing back stage I have no idea.! Other than following her career, buying her first solo album etc that was the extent of our connection despite the fact that in hind sight we had many people we knew in common with each other stretching over many years.

Six and a half years ago I was diagnosed with two types of cancer. (That’s in a different blog). Once through the chemo therapy for the High Grade Diffuse B Cell Lypmphoma I decided to start talking about things via blogs on facebook. One of the things the Maggie Centre offered, in Nottingham, was a stress management course and keen to try anything that might help my general well being and longjevity I signed up.  I mentioned it on facebook and said that I had found some of it useful. Some how via the tendrils that spread out through the facebook networks I had made a freind request to Linda and she had accepted me. To my surprise when I mentioned about the stress management she asked me to tell her more and I offered to email her various bits and pieces. It all began from that point.

The thing was that I had two types of cancer, the second one causing the first and probably having been there before the first. That’s the one I still have which is Follicular Lypmphoma. Now obviously while in treatment of the first type of cancer and without hair it could have been noticable that there was something wrong with me but once my hair grew back and today, for instance, you can’t tell if you look at me, that there is anything wrong with me at all. I have an invisible, probably again at some point, life threatening desease.

Linda has dysphonia. Dysphonia is, sypmlistically defined, difficulty in speaking due to a physical disorder of the mouth, tongue, throat, or vocal cords. Researchers think it may be caused by a problem in the basal ganglia of the brain. This is the area that helps coordinate muscle movement. Spasmodic dysphonia may be inherited. It may start after a cold or the flu, injury to the voice box, a long period of voice use, or stress. In other words it’s a nuerological disorder. The fact that this happens to anyone is distressing but the fact it happened to this wonderful singer is all the more tragic in my view. Her disease is to all itents and purposes invisible as well although on bad days you can hear it if she speaks. Because her voice is unreliable she cannot sing live but has managed some recordings post diagnosis. Being robbed of this form of communication facebook has been a life line to her where she can interact in her own beautiful, witty and intelligent way bringing alot of joy to others, interacting with her fans and friends and indeed…making new friends.

It was the invisible nature of, in my case a life threatening illness and, in her case a life limiting illness that drew us together and helped forge a friendship that in my case has been an absolute god send.

Linda and I communicate by email almost everyday. Sometimes those communications are little more than a ‘hi’ and checking in with each other but at other times Linda has the joy of getting to hear all the minutiae of my life, my angers, fears and frustrations and reflects things back to me or just supports me unconditionally which has been fantastic. She shares her feelings and thoughts in return and we know that the other one is there. If I needed her I know she would be there for me and I hope she feels the same. That is the sign of a good freind and she knows me ‘warts and all’.

I was due to sing in a Michael Morpurgo show in London, near Christmas time and decided to ask her if she’d like to come. She said she would. I told her what time I would be at the venue and she came in while we were back stage. I heard her first saying, “is Jo here?” and then she came over gave me a hug and a kiss and a present and pretty much rushed off again. I wasn’t sure if she was coming back or not because I knew that at times it is difficult for her to hear other singers as that is a constant reminder of her own situation. But she did come back later and she hung around afterwards. After that, a few months later, I fancied popping up to London as I’d been invited to an exhibition and asked her if she fancied meeting up and she said yes. I even managed to get into my email, ‘Meet me at the station don’t be late” which made us both laugh. That time, as we essentially just spent the afternoon together, I suppose you’d say we bonded. We share a similar sense of humour and I find her incredibly easy to be around. We talk….yes even with the dysponia..which comes and goes in it’s severity..if she struggles I chat away a bit more…and the time flys by in a matter of minutes even when it’s hours. She’ll answer her mobile of we’re planning to meet but generally speaking, for obvious reasons, does not like talking on the phone. We meet up once or twice a year just to be together or occasionally to do something together eg we went to the Shirley Collins 80th birthday celebration in Cecil Sharpe house. Gues tickets were forthcoming which was lovely and we heard Shirley sing for the first time in years as she had suffered from similar difficulties to Linda. But mostly we sit, we natter, we eat…oh yes we are both huge foodies…I can hear her saying and laughing …’with an emphasis on the huge’ whereas I will point out it’s the enthusiasm for food rather than the size of the foodies. I buy her little eadible things for presents unless I’m told not to and I introduced her to bamboo socks…that is actual bamboo soncks, not the name of a  current indie band.

The reason this blog came about is because last week I went up to London, on my way to Brussels, and we spent the evening together, I stopped over and then we had the morning together too. Great fun and once again the time passed in seconds. I love her and enjoy every minute with her. We are like twins separated at birth (something Linda often says when we happen to hold the same opinion or feeling about something). A late friendship and a glorious blessing.

There’s no moral here except to say that I don’t assume everything is as it seems when it comes to how others appear becasue of what has happened to me. I remember a woman talking on the radio about being chellenged when coming out of a dissabled loo in her csse she had a colostomy bag whihc was invisible beneath her clothes. The person who challenged her did not have a dissability, not that that is relevant, but felt evangelical enough to make an assumption….and who can’t see that situation from both sides of the coin as it were. So, some things are invisible and that’s what i bear in mind. The same as mental illness is not immediately apparent.

Facebook has a way of popping up friendship reminders. They have no real relation to true friendships in the sense that it will say for example , “you’ve been friends for 5 years – congratulations”. Whereas , if they are really friends they will probably have been in your life a lot longer than that. You know all that anyway but one of them popped up this week and got me thinking. It was Ian Anderson, he of Southern Rag, Folk Roots and also then the now sadly no longer, Froots. He is also a musician and singer. I’m not exactly clear how my people were connected to his people in relation to this specific story but it was definitely due to pre existing connections that we met. The mutually connected people were Rod and Danny Stradling and therefore my being in The Old Swan Band.

Ian lived in a flat in Farnham as far as I remember. It was up one floor and he shared with his partner Maggie Holland , also a musician and singer. I remember several types of soft toy versions of Vultures, like cartoon ones rather than life like ones, dotted about the flat and this fitted in with the fact that their duo was called ‘Hot Vultures’. I still have one of their albums on vinyl somewhere….Probably in France.

Normally you can tell by the people you were with at the time, in any one story, who you were performing with. This one escapes me slightly . What I do remember clearly was that Ian , at the very least, was at home and then there was my sister, Fi Fraser, Martin Carthy and myself. Not a band I’ve ever been in …but perhaps thought for the future ha ha ! There may we’ll have been a Farnham Maltings festival or something. However , there weren’t any other ‘Old Swans’ around in my memory and as Fi and I didn’t drive at the time that part of my memory has baffled me. The flat had a huge front room and Fi, Martin and I were all billeted on separate mattresses in the nearly separated around the space . It’s what you did at the time ..stayed with friends or friendly people and bunked in with others where necessary but now I confess to hating sharing rooms with any body else except my partner.

I remember nothing about the gig or post gig wind down etc but I do remember I was to sleep on the mattress nearest the window where all the plants were. Once the three of us were ready I think we all bid each other good night and ‘uncle Marty Carty’ , as Fi and I affectionately call him, probably turned off the light and what was presumably hoping for a peaceful nights rest.

Sadly that was not to be. As I said I was under the window near quite a lot of house plants. One of those was an amaryllis…those brightly coloured things that when in full bloom, on the top of a very substantial stork, have four trumpet like flowers facing outwards in separate directions. Unbeknown to me it was closer than I thought and presumably I knocked it whilst turning over. Knocked it enough to create a large wobble which I was unaware of until the moment one of the trumpet flowers landed on top of my nose and mouth, right over my nose and mouth and I woke up yelling. It was obviously trying to kill me !! It reminded me of a very old ‘Doctor Who’ episode where, whoever was trying to take over the world, had put special cut daffodils everywhere. As soon as someone picked one up the trumpet flower turned and squirted a film like substance over the nose and mouth of the person holding it. They collapsed and then the substance evaporated clean away so nobody knew what was going on and why people were dying. Well…I got the full trumpet instead of the suffocating film.

My squeal of alarm set my sister and Martin dashing for the light . Once that was on, we sorted things out calmed down and tried to go to sleep again. No real harm done except some raised pulse rates and earth from the potted plant on the floor which we knew we could clean up in the morning.

We dropped off to sleep again and then …..the next yell was my sister. She was writhing around in bed with cramp in her calf. Lights on again and lovely Martin massaged her calf until the pain was gone and we all …..eventually went back to sleep.

We were maybe a little later up in the morning than expected. Who knows. I can’t remember. But I do remember that night . Poor Martin. He never shared a room with us again. Who can blame him but we have been under his roof from time to time….several rooms away usually …..for safety I presume!

I promised to tell you about the meal we had. I mentioned in the original Dubrovnik blog that we’d had a lot of good food there including Sushi and fresh fish but we had treated ourselves to a night in their Michelin retaurant because we’re both real foodies and we love tasting both ordinary, wonderful, tasty, local cuisine and high end cuisine. It’s a great pleasure and often a huge amount of fun.

The restaurant, 360 ( http://360dubrovnik.com ) boasts 360 degree views of the bay but actually it was rather cold when we were there so we were eating inside. This didn’t bother us particularly but some geusts audibly comlained. I’d have liked to have seen if they’d still complained if they’s insisted on eating outside, lost most of their food to the wind and the sea and been absolutely frozen. Surely they were there for the food. There were many accessibly panoramic day time views from Dubrovnik of the sea  and town etc.

In terms of it’s internl ambience there were a couple of things we didn’t like. We were seated on a table that wasn’t actual separate from another couple. There was a sort of foliage thing going on in the middle of the table presumably aimed at creating some kind of privacy but it didn’t hide the fact that you were only a foot and a half away from the person sat next to you. The other thing was, whilst I loved the lamps which were made up of cascading glass bulbs it was all a bit too dim and that’s a problem when you want to see what you’re eating. We went for their traditional tasting menu, the one that had resulted in their michelin star and matching wines. We always go for the matching wines if we can because there are wines we have never heard of and would never have ordered but usually go absolultely perfectly with the food you’re eating. Sadly I didn’t note the wines down so you’ll have to forgive me for that. Next time!

The first dish after the amuse bouche was a variety of ways f cooking carrots including slow cooked, chipped and creamed served with pine nuts and black garlic. It was tasty but not something that would make me rush back to eat again. Maybe I’m being unfair to the elevation of the humble carrot but it didn’t wow me.

One thing that does always wow me, however, is the presentation. Look at that. Sometimes it feels rude to destroy these things with your fork and I have seen people desimate the things on their plate without so much as a glance at the creation or indeed looking as if they’re enjoying themseves at all.

Next up was a scampi capuccino with jerusalem artichoke. Normally I say I hate jerusalem artichoke but this was providing the foam rather than in whole bits which made it much more palatable to me and was delicious. I was so pleased there was sea food and fish on the menu. You’d hope so being by the sea.

A little brown looking this dish but it tasted lovely. But there was better yet to come.

We then had a fish dish. Turbot with cauliflower cream, clams and a dark fish sauce. I admire any one who can cook fish to perfection (scared myself tonight by baking some sea bass perfectly but it isn’t something I always get right.) The fish was cooked, moist and succulent and the flavours gorgeous. I could certainly have eaten that fish dish again and again and again.

Then it was meat. Black pork neck (a partiuclar bread) with a beetroot and sour onion tart, pork skin chips, sweet potatoe and some cream of mustard. Yum. I’m a huge fan of beetroot and everything on the plate went together beautifully.

Isn’t that beautiful too. in contrast to the brown dish the colours were spectacular here as you can see.

After this I went for a comfort break. Whe I came back there was a very camp gentleman in the courtyard area. He happened to be japanese and wearing a white bomber jacket that had gold lurex swirls all over it. He was exclaiming loudly, whilst waving is arms around, about how dissapointed he was that they didn’t have a table for him in the restaurant. They were very patiently saying he was welcome to sit in the receeption area but the restuarant was full as it books out weeks in advance. I haven’t seen anyone flounce on a sofa to that degree for a long time. Back at the table I was talking about what I witnessed when who should I spy but the same gentleman only with a couple of other Japanese people. He seemed to have persuaded them to allow him to join them. The funny thing was the couple looked so ‘ordinary’, quiet by comparison, not extravagantly or indeed elegantly dressed and totally at odds with him and yet they had agreed for him to join them. I lost interest after that as more food was arriving and all seemed to be going well in their part of the restaurant.

The desert. In terms of presenattion I thought this was breath taking. I know from watching masterchef how hard it is to curve chocolate perfectly etc etc. This tasted very good too but I really didn’t want to disturb this plate although I did of course.

Coffee and chocolate mouse and rasberry sorbet..obviously some rasberry crumb on there too.

Having eaten all that I find I have a photo of another dish not described on the menu and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. it’s a bit out of focus too. I blame the wine!

I’ll have to ask my companion when I get a chance.

Do you know one of the most memorable things about the meal. They made their own bread. Most of these restaurants do and they served it with two packs of butter. One was a pepper butter and the other a truffle butter. We both raved about the truffle butter and I confess we ate every last bit of it. Funny how sometimes the little things really matter too.

Digestion not easy after that number of courses. I have had taster menes with more but you only want tiny bites then so that you can enjoy it without feeling uncomfortable. After all that there’s always hand made chocolates and fruit gells as well as biscuits etc and often too hard to resist even if you are full so you have to allow enough time for all that to go down before sleep. Oh I do feel lucky experincing these things. Great fun.

More soon. Toodle ooh.

Last week some of you will know that it was the culmination of my young composers project 2019. Much of my role as Artistic Director is making sure everyone’s needs are met whether they be the young composers themselves, the ensemble or patrons and facilitators like Annie Whitehead and Judith Weir. It’s full on for everyone and the recording sessions over the weekend also involved some crisis management.

Monday night was the night of the performance and my anxieties were high only because I wanted it all to go well. I knew the ensemble would be great and I knew the pieces were varied and good but it was hoping that all the hard work was communicated to the audience. I am just conscious that some people do not understand how much work goes into making and arranging five to ten minutes of music. But this was a discerning audience and I needn’t have worried.

The evening was glorious with the musicians shinning through and being gracious in their acknowledgement of how much the young composers had challenged them – in a totally positive way.

The pieces came across well and the audience all said what a wonderful evening it was . I was emotionally drained but knew I would be wired for a good few hours so I had made an arrangement to drive to Stansted airport, just for the hell of it! Only joking.

Last year was so busy and the beginning of this year too that I haven’t been able to spend much time at my house in France so, rather than not get here at all, I had sorted a couple of mini trips and this was one of them.

I left Nottingham University, drove to a Hotel near Stansted and was in my room by 23.45. Unfortunately there was a very audible row going on when I was standing in the corridor but fortunately barely audible in the room.

I even managed some sleep and hopped out of bed, relatively spritely at 04.30. Showered, dressed and was sat having breakfast by 05.45.

I actually felt quite smug about having achieved all that and about not feeling physically aweful either.

In Toulouse I was just about to head out through customs, just after the baggage bit when I thought I’d avail myself if the facilities due to the fact it’s about 1.5 hours to my house from Toulouse and I was going to shop for food on the way.

I often keep my iPhone in my back pocket of my jeans and so standard practice, when about to drop my trousers, is to place the phone on the loo role holder so that it doesn’t fall out of my back pocket and smack into a solid floor which it has done in several occasions.

I smuggly made a mental note with a wry smile, ‘…and make sure you don’t leave that there Jo!’ Finished off, collected all my belongings, headed out through customs and then off to the car hire desk. I had just handed over my passport and driving licence when I thought, ‘oh shit, I’ve left my phone in the loo’. I explained to the woman and asked her where information was and went rushing off.

My phone wasn’t simply in a loo of course, it was in the area that you are not allowed to go back into once you have exited.

The woman on information took me to a special door, used her pass to open it and then waved me in. I was not escorted. It has crossed my mind that anyone could say they’d left their phone in the loo and get let into that area. She had asked me where the flight was from and also asked me the flight number which I couldn’t give her because it was in my phone !

Anyway back inside I rushed to the loo and let out an audible ‘oh no’ when I saw it wasn’t there. An American woman says , ‘oh are you looking for a phone? A woman came out of there just now waving one around and shrugging her shoulders as if to say, ‘what do I do with this” She described the woman as, wearing white, with a leg brace and having a French accent.

Hoping the leg brace might make her easy to spot I rushed off and out of baggage control. No sign of her. Not one iota. So I traped back to info, with sagging shoulders and heightened anxiety.

No the phone hadn’t been handed in. We did have one amusing moment when she asked for my telephone number so that she could phone me if it was handed in. To be fair to her she thought I might have a landline in France and, to be fair to her again I did have a french mobile but it wasn’t charged.

She said she wasn’t allowed to ring my iPhone because it was an international number. Great!

So I wandered up and down a bit, hoping to spot the woman in white and then found some charging points to charge my french mobile. Weirdly these were in the entrance hall to the loo so I was getting quite a lot of weird looks due to my loitering.

Once plugged in I rang my mobile ,off course, I knew it was switched on but I often leave it on silent so it was dependant on the woman in white feeling the vibrations.

No answer.

I then sent a text from my French phone because I know they show up on the screen whether you’ve unlocked it it not – ‘you have my phone. Please return it to information at the airport or ring this number’

Nothing!

I went back to info who had,of course, heard nothing . I sat in a chair for a bit and had a little cry. Then I resolved to carry on regardless.

I went back to the car hire desk which, by the way, had had my passport and driving licence for an hour and a half by then. I wasn’t at all concerned by that as semi consciously I knew that was the case.

Because I have have one of these annual car hire excess policies you have to have a credit card prepared to part with €1000 or so. Now – because I know it’s safer to not always have the same number for my cards I have a secure app on – yes you’ve guessed it – my iPhone where I store such things so I was praying that the one credit card I knew the pin for would a) have enough credit on it and b) indeed be the right pin as memories do weird things under stress.

It went through. Phew!

I had just collected my keys when my phone rang. Bearing in mind I’d been up since 4.30 am I wasn’t feeling bright minded and, despite being relatively fluent in french , my brain did not want to play ball and the babble fish were not translating ( look up hitchhikers guide to the galaxy if that means nothing to you ).

I rushed to info and handed the phone to the woman who had been looking after me. She seemed happy and clear and reeled off a sentence that sounded ok.

I couldn’t quite make it out but understood ‘door on left after tunnel and a word that she kept repeating ‘axia’ or something like that. I found the door and a list of intercom buttons and pressed the one that looked most like axia . I explained that I thought she had my phone and she fired off a reply that made me think I was supposed to wait. Ten minutes later, having stood there looking like a complete dork for far to long – I tried again.

This time her instructions were clearer in french, or at least the first part ‘Push the door and then ….’

I pushed the door and was in some kind of holding chamber . Then I read all the signs (all in French) and worked out how to get through the next door and there I was ….. back in baggage reclaim.

I wandered passed all the airline desks and there was one, near easyJet that closely responded to ‘Axia’ or what ever it was. There was a queue. I stood there but the woman beckoned me forward and said madam here is your phone . I was so beside myself by then I must have had, ‘I’ve lost my phone’ tatoed on my forehead . She didn’t ask me to describe it, phone it or in any way verify it was mine she just handed it over.

…and that was that .

It did get me thinking. I have a pre-load currency card as well as French-bank account card etc. I don’t know their numbers off by heart and hadn’t taken any cash out in advance because I knew I could get some. But not if you have the cards and no means of accessing the pins.

My return boarding passes were on that phone as was the booking reference and access to any emails or information that would have helped me get another boarding card .

The cash would have been easily fixed as I have memorised some of the numbers of my uk bank accounts but the airline stuff … that could have been really awkward. I normally carry an iPad as well which could have tracked my phone and given me access to details in my diary for more boarding passes etc but not this time.

It has all gone to prove that technology is great until it isn’t.

I survived . I spent 2 hours longer in Toulouse airport than I needed to and I hope …..I have some fail safe back up plans for future including possibly having the phone round my neck on a chain like some people do with glasses . Argh………..

Oh the joy of arriving at an airport, finding no queue at check in etc only to find yourself then herded into the cattle throng where you shuffle along having orders barked at you . I sometimes wonder why they don’t resort to electric prongs to keep people alert and brand us with the name of our destination why they’re at it. Meanwhile someone shouts continuously ,’it’ll be quicker if you take off your coat, belt, shoes … ‘Sod it’ just take everything off and tip the contents of your suitcase onto the belt ‘. They didn’t say the last bit but I find it remarkable that they seriously think you can do everything they suggest while moving along and hold everything too. No. It’s actually quicker to move along as the crowd moves, whip off everything once you have your tray and get your clear plastic bag, computer etc from the top of your case where you have sensibly put it for easy access . Problem is quite a few people still don’t seem to understand what they are allowed to take and that it has to fit in a certain type of bag. I am like the rest of the self righteous well travelled who frown and look incredulously on while someone’s entire toiletry collection are taken off them.

I am then suitably contrite when I arrive at my destination only to find I have a small flick knife in my bag and security didn’t spot it. No I’m not joking.

This time I set off the alarm and it was the metal strip on my trousers!

You couldn’t get Croatian currency in Manchester airport and all the guidebooks tell you you get a better exchange on arrival… although not particularly in Dubrovnik airport you don’t. Much better in the town itself.

We easily got our transfer to the hotel, check in was smooth ,despite the fact I’d mislaid the hotel voucher, and pretty much called it a night.

Breakfast at the hotel really made me laugh. The accent here sounds very Russian to us and this middle aged woman waitress with a severe face and bright red lipstick said, with no hint of a smile, “tea, coffee darlink” . It sounded like an order rather than a question but we asked for both hopefully and they did materialise . We swore that we would break her resolve and smiled at her every morning since. There was definitely some twitching at the corners of her mouth by the third morning.

We’re not really people who like guided tours or being part of a crowd. We’d far rather explore somewhere on our own, get our bearings and then decide what we’d like to do later. So the first morning we marched off into the old town and up and down and round about etc. We then felt ready for a spot of lunch.

Bad choice. Not the having lunch bit but where we chose to have it. It was quite a big full restaurant and not good quality.

Neither of us are Telegraph readers but we have discovered that the travel logs from that paper are brilliant and particularly the bits about food . We go on line and check it out and go to the ones recommended – usually. I had some squid and my companion prawns in their shells. The prawns had that aweful meally quality you get when they’ve already been over cooked and then reheated. Uncharactersitically we told them and they took the whole dish off the bill. Wow, I might complain more often if that’s the result. Noramlly to be frank, we can’t be bothered. After that bad lunch we went back to seeking out the online recommendations .

After lunch we went on the cable car ride and had fantastic views across the walled town of Dubrovnik, the sea and the urrounding mountains. Should you want to you could eat up there too. After all that it’s a fairly typical routine for us to go back, rest, swim and get ready for the evening.

That evening I never expected to be eating really good Sushi in Dubrovnik but we did. It was the ‘Oyster and Sushi Bar Bota’ . We had these lovely things called tiger roles and some tempura king prawns whihc were heavenly. The white wine was lovely and comes from a variety of grape called Pošip. Most places if you describe what you like, were excellent at providing the right one. I don’t like and can’t drink really zesty wines and we both like dry white wine. Pošip was delicioius. We also tried Malvazija which was also lovely. This restaurant pleased us so much that went back there for a further two lunches where we also ate their beaf teriyaki . Yum.

Day two consisted of going round the city walls. Dubrovnik is packed full of tourists , of which, I am one but I wouldn’t come here in the height of summer. I can only imagine it would be hell.

There is ever nationality here and a high proportion of Japanese many of whom have sensibly covered up every inch of skin as if it’s mid winter but actually to protect themselves against the sun. I think the Japanses tourists are the easist to identify as they seemed to be the ones in the largest guided groups. They also seemed to take more selfies in every spot with a view and many of them have their phones on those special extended rods. But the streets are full of English, German, Dutch, French, Russians, Scots, Irish, Canadians and Americans and if you like guided tours there will be someone doing it in your language. If the main harbour area and main street are too crowded and horific for you it’s not difficult to go up into the little back streets and find quiet places and small restaurants.

The walls are not for the faint hearted as there are quite a lot of steps up and down . In parts they are narrow so you are only allowed to go round them one way and that can be a little frustrating if you’re held up by someone’s photo opportunity . But it’s well organised with little cafe’s and toilet stops along the way. Your ticket only allows you on it oonce so you can’t secide to come bak down half way round if you want to go bac up again. It is lovely and the views across the roof tops and the tiny streets are lovely. We had alot of sunshine and it wa only April. Thoughtfully the powers that be had provided a cooling sea breeze to make it bearable but again, I don’t think I’d want to be doing this in the height of summer.

That night we were booked into the only Michelin stared restaurant in Dubrovnik. I promise you a description and full photo blog of that one.

Why on earth would prison pop into my mind. Quite often it’s the novels I read that send my thoughts off into various thoughts and memories. Each year one of the Christmas gifts I receive is the Booker prize shortlist and I love it. I have just finished reading “The Mars Room” by Rachel Kushner. It’s set in an Amercian women’s prison and gives quite an insight into how some of the individuals in the novel have ended up where they are and what life is like for them inside and out.

So it sent my mind tumbling back to the times I have been in prison. My first experience of jail was in Spilsby Court House Art Centre. It was in the old Blowzabella days where we pretty much slept anywhere to save money and someone always slept in the van to protect the gear. So the only accomodation offered that night was in the old cells under the building. What was immediatley obvious was the weight of the doors. Huge metal weighty doors that would have crushed you if they had fallen off. I hated the doors and the cells so much that I had to prop mine open as I had an immediate claustrophic experience and was scared that the door would swing shut and I wouldn’t be able to get out.

My next experence was in the old transportation cells in Nottingham. I have no idea why but there was an East Midlands today thing that involved me singing something appropriate by the gallows in the back yard. I can’t remember if this was something to do with a project I was working on or what. This has since become The National Justice Museum but when I was there it wasn’t. The court room was still intact and so were the cells. Into the walls of the cells people had carved their names and occasionally what they were being transported or executed for. I presume you can see all that now. It was chilling to see people being transported for stealing a loaf of bread and other terrible crimes against humanity!…or the ‘have nots’ daring to take from the ‘haves’. Little changes in some ways. As Ray Fisher once said, ‘Times may change but the human condition remains the same”. That’s why we can relate to old folk songs. It may have been a project that John Tams and Micheal Eaton were working on…hard to remember as it involved a long lunch and copious amounts of wine…I certainly couldn’t keep up with them.

Then I ended up in Nottingham mens prison. I haven’t actually ever been in a women’s prison. The Russian blogs talked about the type of training I used to do. Well I was asked to go into Nottingham prison to teach a group of men how to be Assertive. I can hear some of you laughing from here but the fact is most of them knew how to be aggressive but had no idea what assertivness is. Nottigham prison is a catgory B prison. That’s one down from the most secure. As people move through the system and serve their sentances they often get moved to different categories as they pose less of a risk etc. Not everyone of course. Well, many of the men in my group had murdered, or man slaughtered. It was interesting being with them. It made me realise that murder/manslaughter for some is just one step up from the everyday goings on of some peoples lives. If you live in an environment that’s often aggressive, where fights break out constantly and punches or more are thrown it’s not hard to see how one step further can result in a death or greivous injury. Sometimes it’s a case of kill or be killed. I am fortunate. Raised voices or swear words are the strongest form of violence in my life and even those are reasoned and understandable and not generally offensive or designed to wind me up or hurt me. Of course I have experienced that. We may talk about that another time but at this point in my life I don’t have people like that in my innr circle. In general public yes but even then I have been mostly lucky.

There were two individulas who fascinated me the most and who are the only ones who stayed in my memory. The scariest was the guy who was about to be released. Who wouldn’t engage seriously with any of the expercises but tended to respond with comments like…I know how I’d deal with someone in that situation. I’d get a chord, get some gunpowder or whatever, place it up their exhaust on their car and wait for it to explode. There was also something to do with light bulbs, electrical charges and explosions. The thing that scared me wasn’t that he was obviously trying to freak me out but that he was really really intelligent and had a cold calculating air about him. If I’m being honest he felt like someone who had few boundaries, wasn’t interested in creating them and knew exactly what he was doing and the consequences of his actions. If he broke the law again it would be deliberate and not just a ‘one step further’ move. It struck me that he didn’t care about anyone other than himself. God knows what made him that way..

The other guy was called Taff. He had that tattoed on his hands i.e. one letter per knuckle apart from the thumbs.. Not quite sure for whose benefit..himself if he woke up hung over and disorientated somewhere, his oponent as he smashed his fist into their face or what! But you know what, I liked him. He’d killed someone and he seemed genuinely interested  in stopping it happening again. He recognised he had an anger problem and he was the one who explained to me that if you are given a life sentance and you are let out if you over step the mark in any way at all they can just put you back inside to serve out your sentance. He wanted to try and learn how to walk away. He’d lived in a block of flats where a neighbour was keeping him awake all hours with loud noise and music. He had asked/told him to stop more than once and then it all spilled over and the guy ended up dead. Sleep depravation alone can make you violent and if you have a short fuse anyway then a situation like that is explosive. I don’t understand people who live their lives without caring one jot how their behaviour impacts on others around them but there are plenty like that out there. He shouldn’t have done it. Absolutley no doubt about it but if he got parole he hoped he could walk away from conflict or avoid it altogether and wanted some tools in his armoury (inappropriate but deliberateuse of words) to help him come out the other side unscathed, not to have hurt anyone and remain a free man. Of course I could have just been taken in but I like to think not as my general modus operendi is to think the best of people not the worst. I hope I stay like that.

As the novel I eas reading points out, education in prisons is often seen as a way to aleviate the tedium of a non stop predicatble routine. That aside there were plenty I met there and at Ranby priosn who were studying hard for GCSE’s and more. I liked Ranby less. In Nottingham you had to go through all the security at the gate and then you were taken across to the education unit. In Ranby I waa given my own set of keys which I hated. This was so once inside, no-one had to escort me but I could lock and unlock gates myself. I really didn’t like it. Most of the young men I met there were in for drug related crimes. The other reason Ranby didnt suit me was it was over an hours drive and you had to be there for something like 7.30 in the morning. Not good for a musician.

I didn’t do any music with them. I’d would have liked to have done that. It was all assertiveness and life skills type thing and I’m glad I did it but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

My last time in the cells was as part of our trio Moria’s research for our show ‘Framed – The Alice Wheeldon Story’ We visited the court rooms where she was chrged but also the bits the public don’t get to see…the very creepy cells underneath.

 

This is the third little blog about Russia. I remember two other trips one involved St Petersburgh and the other Nizhny Novgorod…don’t you just love that name? St Petersburgh was beautiful. Laid out, as you probably know in Europeon style and with some beautiful original masterpieces in the art galleries etc. I rmeber standing trasnfixed by a Monet for ages. There was plenty to do in our time off. Not that we had much.

I think it was in St Petersburgh where we were staying in a modern old communist style hotel. Quite an odd place in that each floor seemed to have a small cafe/bar type place where you were supposed to take your breakfast. I definitely had my own room and I had my usual set of phone calls that I used to get to my Hotel Rooms in Russia. The one’s where you are offered a ‘beautiful Russian lady’ for your companion. This was usually said before I spoke and then they realised that ‘Jo’ was a woman. I’ve noticed across Europe that not many other countries reduce Joanne, Joanna or in my case Jo-Anne to Jo. Jo is most definitely seen as a male name. Anyway, those phone calls always made me laugh and I always appologised to Mark assuming he’d have had the same offers but was lumbered with me for the evening.

Before we went out we decided we wanted a beer. Off to the little cafe/bar we went and were provided with a nice bottle each of czech bud. The original recipe by all accounts. We sat down and the only other person in there was a guy with very blood shot eyes. He was up for a chat and he turned out to be Swedish. He said that he quite often flew in for the weekend as th flights were cheap and so was the alcohol. He was drinking tumblers…yes tumblers, probably not quite half a pint, of vodka. No wonder his eyes were red and he was still there three hours later when we came back from  our meal.

It did strike me as rather sad that you could be so desparate for cheap booze that you’d fly into a beautiful city like St Petersburgh and barely move from the hotel. Just sit there and drink yourself stupid.

I was in our drinks cupbaord, here at home, the day before yesterday looking for Vermouth for a Nigel Slater recipe. Could I find any? No. What I did find was three bottles of unopened vodka. Neither of us drink vodka although I might turn my hand to the odd cocktail or two now I know it’s there. Does make ou wondewr how or why we acquired it.

So Mark and I went out. On another occasion we’d decided to go for a beer on the way home thinking that a city bar would be a lot more cheery than the bleery eyed drinkers bar in the hotel. We found one down some basement steps.

There weren’t many in and so we sat down with our beers. In the next few minutes a keyboard was set up and a guy started playing with a woman singing some ‘western’ hits in English and some Russian songs. I found it very funny because the English sort of resembled what it was supposed to be but was more a ‘sound-a-like-‘ version of words that really didn’t have any meaning as they were sung at all. People, the few that were there, were up and dancing and it was only 6pm. I can’t remember if I joined in but I do remember smiling alot.

It reminds me of a time when a Russian dance troup were at a Europeon festval somewhere. I think it was Austria and Token Women may have been playing. They wanted everyone on the bill to play together (generally most musicians I know’s nightmare) and the only think we found we had in common was ‘Those were the days my friend’ as the melody turned out to be a Russian Folk song originally. No wonder it’s so catchy.

Then there was Nizhny. We had a to get a train. This time I was travelling with two Marks. The one I normally worked with and the Amercian mentioned in previous blog who liked to eat his puddings first and wore a ring on his thumb.

This was such a memorable trip because it involved a train ride through Russia overnight. Nizhny Novgorod is 400 miles East of Moscow where the Oka river empties into the Volga. The train journey made me feel like I was in some kind of movey. Our compartment had a guard at the door in a red coat with a very serious expression on his face.. We were ‘welcomed’ on board and spent the first half of the night playing cards to gas lamps. I have longed to remember that card game because it was brillaint but I can’t. I know it was quite complicated, involved a lot of strategic thinking and was captivating. We then slept on our bunks rolling about to the trains motion and were woken in the morning to tea from a samovar.

What I hadn’t realised was that Russian crosses time zones. I had naively assumed that the general principle was one country, one time zone. I now know differently. adjust your watches and bed times accordingly. We had to get up for our training days a lot earlier I remember.

Nizhny was under snow and there in the streets were sleighs, yes, horse drawn sleighs with people wrapped up in furs with their hands in muffs etc. Bloody freezing but magical to see. The other thing that was amazing was the Volga was frozen. It freezes so deeply and so solidly that you can ride a sleigh, car, lorry across or walk or whatever. I always wondered at what point you knew not to. The town also had those magical icicles. There had been plenty in Moscow. So long and speer like that you were terrfiied of walking underneath but had little choice. I wonder what the stats are on ‘speered by icicle. Let’s just say that in March 2010 St Petersburgh’s thaw killed five and injured 150 from falling icicles and that actually made the British papers. I assume they knock them off where they can but sometimes you can’t preveent those accidents and the snow can be so deep and driven that bodies are sometimes found frozen underneath.

I found Russia, interesting and magical in parts. Disturbing also in it’s race to embrace wetern culture making millionaires over night and leaving some working three jobs a day to afford bread and other basics.

So those are the Russian cronicles. More soon about something else.